


variation under nature

by neroh



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universe - The Age of Adaline, Bisexual Character, F/M, First Time, Flashbacks, Immortality, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:58:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neroh/pseuds/neroh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy, born at the turn of the 20th century, is rendered ageless after an accident. After many solitary years, he meets Jim, who complicates the eternal life he has settled into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	variation under nature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twofacedjanus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofacedjanus/gifts).



> I could not have done this without my wonderful friend and beta, Bre. Thank you, my dearest! Also many thanks to Leah, Kellan, Mo, and Matt. 
> 
> Contains quotes from _The Age of Adaline_.

It’s December 21, 2015, when a taxicab travels through San Francisco, from Chinatown to Oakland.

The car carries a single passenger: a man, his birth name, Leonard McCoy, current alias Nicholas Harvey. It parks itself outside a house, a tidy picture of stucco and neatly trimmed hedges. The perfect location to operate a forgery ring.

To anyone else, it was an upper-middle-class housing development at the base of the Oakland Hills. The streets are uniform, the green lawns freshly mowed by gardeners or teenaged children; the very last place law enforcement officials would ever think to look.

Leonard reckons that the worst thing to happen in this neighborhood, constructed in the wake of the fire that devastated the land, was that someone forgot to pick up after their dog.

A chuckle passes through his lips as Leonard pays the cab driver and walks up the damp pavement to gently rap on the front door. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he waits.

Seconds later the muffled sound of footsteps and a lock being unbolted follow. The door opens, revealing a young woman—barely a day over twenty— with daisy yellow hair and mismatched green and blue eyes. She gives him a once over, smacking her gum, before says, “You’re Nick Harvey?”

“Yeah,” Leonard replies.

The stranger steps aside, allowing him entry. The interior is modestly furnished with a touch of an era long passed before this young woman was even a thought of her parents. “Just keep it down,” she tells him. “My dad’s sleeping; had a late-night surgery.”

Nodding, the man surveys various baseball memorabilia as he follows the young woman into her bed. The walls are plastered with posters of bands and the San Francisco Giants where there aren’t photographs of friends and family. She trots over to her desk where she scoops up a manila folder. “Why twenty-nine?” she asks.

“I beg your pardon?” Leonard questions as he reaches for his wallet.

She raises a skeptical brow as if she’s certain that he heard her. He recalls the very same expression on Joanna’s face when she was that age—of disdain and thinking she knew it all. “Why did you put twenty-nine as your age?” Opening the folder, she peeks inside before glancing back at him. “You could have easily put something younger; that’s what most people do anyway.”

“Ah,” he comments, opening his wallet to take out five crisp hundred dollar bills. “No reason.” Leonard looks around her bedroom. “Why are you doing this?”

“Come again?”

He gestures to her. “You’re a smart kid and forgery is a felony. A quarter-million dollar fine, six years in jail. That’s if you’re lucky.”

Pale terror falls upon her face. “Shit!” she squeaks, body trembling. “Are you a cop?”

“No,” Leonard snorts, handing her the money and taking the folder. He inspects her work, which he has to admit is pretty damn perfect. “I’m about as far from law enforcement as you can get. I just hate to see wasted potential, Carol.”

“It’s Wallace,” the girl, Carol, corrects defiantly.

He points to an autographed baseball. “This is made out to Carol,” Leonard tells her, watching as realization dawns on her face. “Don’t get sloppy, darlin’. It’s the little things that trip you up.”

Leonard ventures back into the fog covered city by the bay, the same way he came. As the taxicab drives over the Golden Gate Bridge’s orange expanse, he watches the Pacific Ocean’s whitecaps while thinking about his life and where it’s heading.

This is the first and last chapter of his story.

 

* * *

 

(Leonard Horatio McCoy was born January 1, 1908, at Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

The only child of Eleanora and David McCoy, he moves with his parents to San Francisco, California two years after his birth. He grows up amongst the sprawling hills, shrouded in the fog of the famous city, wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a surgeon. Bright and showing vast potential, Leonard enters Stanford University’s School of Medicine at age eighteen.

It is just one stepping stone on the way to a perfect life.

On a windy day in June of 1929—just two days after his final medical exam—Leonard and his mother stop to admire the first expanse of the Golden Gate Bridge, where three years hence construction will be finished and connect on side of the strait to the other. As he turns his head, a woman’s hat blows past them and gaining speed as it dances down Baker Beach.

Displaying uncommon gallantry, Leonard races after the hat and catches the brim just before the garment hits the water. Brushing fine grains of sand from the felt fabric, he finds himself face to face with its owner, one Jocelyn Marie Darnell.

It was a meeting of first attraction that would eventually grow to love, the kind Leonard dreamed of when he watched his parents.

Inside the stone walls of Grace Cathedral, they marry exactly one year later in front of their loved ones, only days after Leonard is asked to join the surgical staff at San Francisco General Hospital.

Life is perfect and predictable, something the young surgeon enjoys.

Three years later, the young McCoys welcome the arrival of a baby girl, named Joanna, after both parents’ maternal grandmothers.

The surety of Leonard’s existence changes in rapid succession, beginning with the death of his wife.

A charitable woman who devoted her life to her family and those less fortunate, Jocelyn worked tirelessly to better the conditions the poor classes. No matter the person’s station in life, she wanted to help as she had the resources to do so.

Even those as selfless as Jocelyn McCoy are not given the type of gratitude they deserve; she contracts consumption. The disease ravages her lungs until there is nothing medical science can do for her. Leonard stays by his wife’s side and tends to her, watching helplessly as Jocelyn wastes away.

Ten months later, at age twenty-nine, Leonard McCoy is driving to his parents’ beach house where his family is waiting for him. Something highly unusual occurs that night…

…something almost magical.

Snow falls in Sonoma County.

Navigating through the winding, dark roads of the Inner Coast Mountain Range, Leonard takes a moment to look upon the soft, white flakes drifting down from the starless night.

In the heartbeat of that brief span of time, the automobile hits a patch of ice. Shouting, the young doctor struggles to regain control of the vehicle as it careens across the road, crashing through the guardrail. Inertia propels the car and its occupant down the steep hillside until rolls to a stop in a body of water.

Suspended by his seatbelt and trapped by his own unconsciousness, the immersion of the frigid water causes Leonard’s body to go into an anoxic reflex. It instantly stops his breathing and then slows his heartbeat. Within two minutes, Leonard McCoy’s core temperature drops to eighty-seven degrees.

His heart ceases to beat.

At five minutes to nine o’clock in the evening, Pacific Standard Time, a bolt of lightning strikes the vehicle, thus discharging half a billion volts of electricity and producing sixty thousand amperes of current.

Its effect is threefold.

First, the charge defibrillates Leonard McCoy’s heart.

Second, he is jolted out of his anoxic state, causing the doctor to draw his first breath in two minutes. With shaking hands, he releases the belt and crawls out of the wreckage of his automobile to the muddy shore. There, he collapses to his knees, staring at the mangled metal, rubber, and glass in awe.

Third, based on the Picard-Crusher Principle of Electron Compression in Deoxyribonucleic Acid, which will be discovered in the year 2035, Leonard Horatio McCoy will henceforth be immune to the ravages of time.

He will never age another day.)

 

* * *

 

Leonard is filing away old rolls of motion pictures in the Civic Archives when someone knocks against the door frame.

“Why’re you still here, Nick?” Geoff asks as he lumbers into the dusty, dark room. “It’s New Year’s Eve!”

Checking his watch, he raises a brow. “It’s two in the afternoon,” Leonard tells him, scowling. “Don’t people work anymore?”

“Not on a holiday,” his colleague chirps, inspecting a box labeled _Opening Day_ — _1937_. Glancing up at Leonard with his grey eyes, Geoff tilts his head. “Any plans for tonight?”

“Told you already,” Leonard says. “I’m going to Top of the Mark with Janice.”

Geoff makes a disgruntled sound. “What is she? Like fifty? It’ll be an early night, Nick! You’re young; you should be out partying!”

“I have brunch tomorrow,” Leonard replies as he wipes his hands on the front of his slacks.

“The only reason why you’ll be able to make brunch is that you won’t be hungover or naked like the rest of us,” Geoff scoffs.

He laughs at his colleague’s idea of a good time. Leonard recalls a New Year's Eve that he spent in Paris, drinking champagne and dancing until the sun rose above the Seine. His head had ached something fierce once the allure of alcohol and hard partying—for him anyway—wore off.

“Why people think a fun time includes having your face in a toilet is beyond me,” Leonard mumbles as they leave the room, locking the door behind him.

“That’s because you’re secretly the oldest twenty-nine year old on the planet,” Geoff quips.

Smirk, Leonard whispers, “You have no idea.”

 

* * *

 

The reason he likes Janice’s company is that she’s an old soul and a fan of Baroque orchestral arrangements.

It doesn’t hurt that the violinist is also blind. Unlike the others in the quiet life, Leonard constructed for Nicholas Harvey, she cannot comment on how age never seems to touch him.

They met at a poetry reading by the Beat Museum in North Beach. In a sea of hipsters, boxed wine, and clove cigarettes, Janice Rand sat in the seat next to Leonard and said, “These kids have no idea what real poetry is, even if it bit them in the ass!”

Laughing and thus interrupting the turquoise-haired poet, the two of them left for the quiet reaches of a cafe just up the street where they talked. It had been ages since Leonard had been able to just talk to someone, not having to divulge specks of information about his life, but just of his interests.

And it goes without saying that Janice is as fiery as they come. Under a cloud of pale blonde hair and milky green irises, she is independent and witty as she is talented. The first time Leonard heard her play at Davies Symphony Hall, tears prickled his eyes.

He watches her from across the ballroom as the beautiful sound coming from her violin accompanies a piano. The room seems to come to a hush the moment she begins to play, causing everyone in their elegant finery to stop what they’re doing and watch.

Over the rim of his champagne flute, Leonard notices a young man enter the ballroom. Like the other gentlemen, he wears a tuxedo, expertly tailored to his trim body.

It’s not the expensive clothing that grabs Leonard McCoy’s attention nor his good looks, which are gracefully bestowed upon him. No, it’s the young man’s shocking blue eyes and how they radiate from across the room, like two sapphires.

 _No_ , he thinks to himself as their stares meet. _Like the deep end of the ocean._

The stranger’s white-toothed grin comes, causing a dimple to form at the corner of his generous mouth. Leonard is about to return it when a slender woman with mocha colored skin links her arm through the stranger’s. She pecks his cheek, smiling when the stranger turns his attention to her.

Disappointed, Leonard startles as the room erupts into wild applause. He joins them, as it’s the proper thing to do, and worms his way through the crowd towards Janice, not realizing that the stranger has turned back to his vacated spot.

A waiter assists his friend into a chair when Leonard arrives, holding two flutes of champagne. “You were amazing,” he tells her, bending over to press a kiss to Janice’s cheek.

“You _always_ say that Nicholas,” the violinist counters, grasping his wrist. “Now, have you been a good friend and brought me something to drink?”

He hands her the flute, chuckling at Janice’s delight as he takes a seat next to her. “It’s never polite to let a lady go thirsty,” Leonard teases.

“I see no lady here,” Janice fires back, winking deviously. She takes a sip of the champagne and smiles. “So, has anyone caught your attention?”

Leonard’s mind drifts back to the stranger with haunting eyes and finds himself shaking his head. “No one of importance.”

They pass the time dancing amongst the people in attendance and indulging themselves. It’s near midnight when a gentleman asks Janice for a dance, which the woman accepts.

Taking out his cell phone, Leonard ducks into the quiet hallway and walks towards the windows. Beyond the glass panels, San Francisco is in all its glittering glory. It’s a surprisingly clear night, allowing one to see all the way to Sausalito.

Staring upon the bay, he hits dial on the touchscreen and waits for the recipient to pick up. A drowsy voice greets Leonard after the second ring. “Hey baby doll,” he says, smiling. “Did I wake you?”

He paces in front of the window, chatting merrily with his late-night call as the clock on the Ferry Building’s facade strikes midnight. Leonard is oblivious to the celebration and fireworks, as the person he speaks with is far more important than another start of a year.

“Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he tells the caller. “That’s right, darlin’. No—you don’t have to get me anything! Your sweet little face is the best gift I could ask for.” Leonard turns to pace back towards the other end of the hallway when he notices that he’s being watched by the blue-eyed man.

The stranger is leaning up against the corner, smiling at the conversation taking place. His lips spread wider when he realizes that Leonard has seen him. Taking it upon himself to close the distance between them, he saunters over as Leonard is saying his goodbyes.

“Right,” Leonard replies, hastily. “Yeah. I’ll see you then. Bye baby doll. I love you.” He ends the call, pocketing his cell phone into his tuxedo jacket. “Is it a habit of yours to eavesdrop on a stranger’s phone call?”

“Only when the stranger leaves a perfectly good party before midnight,” the man tells him.

Up close, it’s hard to say that this man is anything but beautiful. Unlike other men their age, his dirty blond hair is reminiscent of Cary Grant or Clark Gable, very clean cut and stylish. Leonard idly wonders what it would be like to mess up the silky strands with his fingers or how this man’s full lips would feel against his own.

“I’m Jim,” the stranger tells him, extending his hand with a smile.

The corners of his eyes crinkle charmingly, Leonard notices as he takes Jim’s hand. “Nick,” he replies.

“So, Nick,” Jim says, “isn’t there some sort of tradition that if you’re alone on New Year’s Eve, you’re supposed to kiss a stranger?”

Leonard finds himself laughing as he lets go of his new acquaintance's hand; full belly laughter that is far too rare.

“Dammit,” Jim groans. He raises a thick brow. “You’ve heard it before?”

“Just once,” he replies. “From a young Bing Crosby.”

An incredulous expression crosses over Jim’s handsome face and it’s then that Leonard realizes what he’s said. Clearing his throat, he shrugs. “Type,” he adds smoothly. “Well, Happy New Year, Jim.”

With that, Leonard walks towards the elevators, leaving Jim by the window. It’s his luck that the doors pop open as soon as the button lights up, inviting him inside and ready to take him down to the lobby. As he slumps against the wall, there is a vague commotion coming from outside and the stampede of a single person’s footsteps while they shout apologies.

Leonard is startled when a hand slams into the closing elevator doors, causing them to bounce open. “Jesus!”

“Well,” Jim says with a wince while he shakes his hand in pain and steps inside. “That’ll teach me not to put my hand where it doesn’t belong.”

The doctor in him, long buried and put to rest, grabs Jim’s hand to inspect it. “Something tells me it won’t,” Leonard mutters. He presses over the other man’s knuckles. “Do you realize that a hydraulic elevator door has enough force to shatter your bones when it closes?”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t go with my first plan,” the younger man quips. “I was going to dive.”

“You could have broken something,” Leonard tells him, rolling his eyes.

Jim cocks his head while he watches him. “So you’re a doctor?”

“What? No,” Leonard replies, tersely. “I’m not a doctor.”

“So you’re just a concerned citizen,” he teases, leaning into Leonard’s sphere.

The scent of Jim’s cologne is a citron cocktail of bergamot and lemon with notes of olive tree blossom, Guaiac wood, and a bean of some sort. It permeates the small space of the elevator, sinking into Leonard’s skin and intoxicating him. “Isn’t your girlfriend wondering where you are?”

“My girlfriend?” the young man wonders, looking genuinely confused. A beat later, he begins to chuckle. “You mean Nyota? She’s not my girlfriend.”

Leonard snorts. “Sure she isn’t.”

“No, really,” Jim counters. “She’s my business partner; her husband got stuck in New York because of the storms, so here I am.”

“Lucky me,” Leonard grouses, still holding Jim’s hand. The skin on the younger man’s knuckles is calloused and rough on the texture of his fingertips, telling signs of an active life.

The elevator doors open to the lobby, snapping Leonard out of his reverie. He drops Jim’s hand, taking a step back. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” he says. “Have a happy new year.”

A pang of regret follows him out into the New Year’s chilly evening as he waits for the hotel page to hail a taxicab for him. Leonard doesn’t have to wait long, as a yellow taxi pulls up alongside the curb. Thanking the hotel employee he slips inside, grateful for the vehicle’s heat and the smell of leather causing Jim’s cologne to fade from memory.

As the taxicab pulls out onto Bush Street, a hand grabs onto the window frame, causing the driver to slam on the breaks. For a terrifying moment, Leonard feels the sensation of weightlessness before he’s firmly seated in the back of the taxicab.

“I’m too old for this!” he hisses, turning his head towards a very apologetic looking Jim. His handprint is smudged into the glass where his hot breath isn’t fogging it up. “Yes?” Leonard asks, dourly.

Jim motions to him to roll down the window, to which he ends up taking advantage of when he unlocks the back door and slides in along Leonard. “Hi,” he says, sounding winded. “So that’s it?”

“What’s it?” Leonard huffs.

Running a set of white teeth over his bottom lip, Jim cocks his head. “You find out I’m single, then you bail? Really, Bones?”

“What?” he barks. “Who’s Bones?”

Jim nudges his side. “You are,” he explains with a grin. “All that talk about breaking my bones by shoving it into places it doesn’t belong.”

“A lesson that you _still_ haven’t learned,” Leonard notices.

As Jim goes to refute this, the taxi driver turns around in the front seat. “As much as I am enjoying this witty banter, could one of you give me an address?”

“Oh yeah,” Jim says, leaning forward and patting the man’s shoulder. “Take us to 650 Vallejo.”

Leonard blinks, gobsmacked. “Wait, what?” he stammers. “That’s not my address!”

“I know, it’s mine,” the younger man quips, positively beaming as he settles into the seat next to Leonard. “You’ve got about ten minutes to decide if you’re going to come up with me or spend a lonely night by yourself, Bones.”

 

* * *

 

He ends up following Jim into his loft.

Stumbling is a more accurate description of the wrestling the two men engage in as they climb the stairs. His mouth is crushed against Jim’s—god, the taste of him drives Leonard crazy—while fingers grasp at fabric and buttons. Teeth tug at his bottom lip, gnashing the plump flesh before a tongue soothes it sting.

The younger man reminds him of the finest brandy; syrupy sweet and warm like honey. It spreads like a slow moving wave, growing in strength and consistency until it’s all that Leonard senses on his tongue and palate.

A hypnotic taste in competition with Jim’s sea blue eyes; all of this man is designed to shatter every bit of Leonard’s common sense. From the sprinkle of faded freckles upon the neat nub of his nose to the unknown scar upon his chin - Jim is a menace.

Groaning and uncaring of the consequences, Leonard tilts his head for Jim’s tongue to lick a stripe up his neck. The wall is pressed against his back as one of his legs is hooked over the younger man’s hip. They continue making out for several minutes—a filthy dance of slick tongues and heady moans—until Jim breaks away.

He’s a glorious mess of ruffled hair and swollen lips tinged with flushed cheeks. “Fuck,” he breathes, leaning in to peck Leonard’s mouth.

Or at least that’s the intent. Leonard ends up swallowing Jim’s moan as he pulls him closer, feeling the outline of the other man’s cock against his thigh.

“Fuck, hold on,” Jim tells him, his voice muffled as he digs around for his house keys. The vibration of the other man’s moan when Leonard tugs on his earlobe travels straight to his groin. “Nick…”

To give into lust is a heady sensation and one that he does not often indulge in. Leonard is a man of few friends and even few acquaintances. Its better this way, he’s learned, not to have attachments or small details when he eventually leaves.

But just this once, he gives in like a dam bursting open.

He doesn’t see much of Jim’s living space, just the bedroom. It’s a study of high paneled windows and ceilings mixed in with brick and exposed beams and pipes.

Leonard knows this because he spends a good deal of time on his back, submitting to Jim’s whims and fancies. By the time his cock is released from the confines of his slacks, a trail of mouth-shaped bruises litters his torso—from neck to just above his pubic hair.

He’s a symphony of wanton, needy sounds, completely lost in a haze of Jim’s hands, Jim’s mouth, and Jim’s body and so on.

His skin is laved at every curve of muscle Jim finds until that greedy wet heat wraps itself around the head of his cock. Leonard cries out, body jerking at the sensation as his fingers grasp strands of dirty blond hair. “Oh, God,” he moans, his throat suddenly too dry.

“Shh,” Jim murmurs into his slit, tongue lapping up the droplet of precum that resides there. “God, you taste good.”

Leonard opens his eyes a crack to see the younger man’s devious grin, full of intent and committed to a list of sinful activities that he’s certain will cause him to combust.

“Can’t wait to be inside of you, Bones,” he whispers. His face disappears from view, replaced by overwhelming suction as Jim hollows his cheeks and takes Leonard’s spongy head into his mouth, licking.

He loses track of the time Jim spends worshipping his body, hardly feeling the lube-slick fingertips dusting over his puckered entrance. The burn of an index finger punches a gasp from his mouth as it works the tight ring of muscle, easing it open for another.

It’s the second finger pushing into his hole and a flick of Jim’s tongue that undoes him. A rush beginning at his sac and spreading to every iota of his body overwhelms Leonard, trapping him in a blizzard of pleasure.

He’s forgotten the slow burn of orgasm—it’s been ages since he’s gone to bed with anyone. His body remembers and remembers it well as he spasms on Jim’s fingers and inside his mouth. Leonard thinks he might tug on the man’s hair, but he’s fallen victim to a heedless sensation. All he can do is moan and writhe against the mattress.

“Gorgeous,” Jim murmurs sometime later, once most of Leonard’s senses have come back to him. He is pumping glistening three fingers in and out of him, blue eyes intently watching while the other man composes himself. “So gorgeous.”

Leonard reaches for him, shoving his tongue past Jim’s lips and tasting himself inside of the younger man’s mouth. It’s a wanting kiss, urging for more, more, more. It comes when Jim fits a condom over his length and pulls Leonard by the hips so that he’s straddling him.

Later, once he’s ridden himself to another erection and is on the crest of a second orgasm, Leonard is glad that Jim stuck his hand where it doesn’t belong.

It’s an excellent way to right in the New Year, after all.

 

* * *

 

The persistent shrill sound of the alarm on his cell phone wakes him.

Fumbling and unwilling to leave warm sheets, Leonard blindly searches for the device until he feels it against his fingertips. Swiping the alarm off, he falls back onto the mattress with a tired grunt. As Leonard presses the back of his hand against his closed eyelids, another person snuffles next to him.

His eyes snap open while the rest of his body freezes momentarily. Leonard peels his hand away from his face, slowly turn his head to find himself staring at the freckled back of another man. Muscles move fluidly under fair skin drenched in the morning light as Jim turns over in his sleep.

A fan of dark lashes flutter against high cheekbones as his succulent mouth draws breath; the very same mouth that Leonard kissed and bite until both their lips were red and swollen. Jim’s imperfections are visible in the natural light; old acne scarring, sun spots on his nose, chapping skin on his mouth.

Hell if the man isn’t beautiful and despite all evidence to the contrary, Leonard is a human being.

Slowly reaching for his cell phone to check the time, Leonard finds that it’s nearly ten-thirty. That gives him less than two hours to get home, clean up, and be on time for brunch at Water Street Cafe. With years of practice, he slips out of the cocoon of rumpled sheets and bares his naked body to the cool air of Jim’s home.

Leonard begins a quiet search of his discarded clothing, finding most of it in a heap by the doorway leading into the bedroom. He pulls on what he can locate, trying not to wake the room’s other occupant. It’s a task all its own; every rustle of sheets or sleepy grunt gives Leonard pause as he peers over the foot of the mattress to see if Jim has woken up.

He’s never been good at goodbyes, he rationalizes as he buttons his tuxedo jacket. It’s easier this way if Leonard can avoid the stunted conversation and awkward pauses.

Not that he didn’t have fun with Jim, who is now sprawled and snoring softly. He just doesn’t want to have to explain the why nots.

Slipping out of the bedroom, he allows himself one final glance at the young man to admire how the sunlight softens his features.

Besides, it’s not like he’ll ever see him again.

 

* * *

 

(It’s New Year’s Eve in the year 1960 and Leonard is at an Englishman’s flat located in Cour de l’Étoile d’Or off rue du Faubourg St-Antoine.

He’s leaning in the window with a glass of wine, looking upon the Parisian skyline. A woman’s soulful voice drifts out of the record player; a breathy mezzo-soprano weaves a tale of love and loss. It’s an interesting choice of music in light of celebrating new beginnings.

“Are you not enjoying the vocal stylings of Édith Piaf?” John inquiries from the sofa. His long limbs are arranged like a Grecian god or ancient Roman Emperor, a decadent display of pale flesh and black hair that falls upon his brows. His cheeks are kissed red from the amount of wine they’ve consumed during the course of the day, brightening his glacial colored eyes.

Leonard turns his head and smirks. “It’s New Years,” he offers with a shrug. “Shouldn’t we put on something less…sad?”

“She doesn’t sound distressed to me,” John tells him before draining the rest of his glass. Licking his lips, the Englishman stands and goes to the window. “She is remembering.”

He chuckles into his glass, fogging up the translucent material. “Remembering?” Leonard sighs, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

“Not all memories are sad, Monsieur Ballard,” his friend purrs as he reaches for the glass and removes it from Leonard’s fingers. Setting it upon the window sill, John goes to stroke Leonard’s hand between his own. “You are too lovely to be morose, Harry.”

Leonard studies his hand clasped between the Englishman’s, noting the stark contrast of their skin tone. Where he is golden, John is as fair as freshly fallen snow.

Yet his skin is as warm as any other.

“Will you divulge what secrets you keep?” John teases, leaning in. He presses his lips against Leonard’s cheek, gentle like a whisper. “Or will you continue to be a mystery?”

He turns his head, capturing John’s mouth against his own. Heartbeats pass and the other man takes the lead in this encounter. Leonard has never been with a man, though he idly compares the softness of John’s lips to those of a woman.

Rough callused hands cup his neck and jaw, a strangely arousing sensation. Leonard groans as the Englishman’s wicked mouth debauches him in a lovely dance between saint and sinners. He swears his body descents from his vitreous standing and straight into the depths of lust.

Leonard relaxes into the kiss, his in a silent plea for more. John takes the invitation, taking more of his lips and tongue, nipping and licking his way deep inside. His partner’s mouth is graceful and direct; his intentions are known and Leonard wants all of it.

John guides them to the bedroom as his hands are at the sides of Leonard’s body, kneading his hips, under his shirt. Once they cross the threshold, the Englishman begins to undress him.

It’s slow, if not a bit tender. His belt is the first to fall victim to John’s hands, followed by his shirt. They are dropped upon the floor, forgotten.

“Are you certain?” he asks, his fingers at Leonard’s waist, grazing the button of his slacks.

He clasps the back of John’s hand, pulling him closer until their mouths are touching. “Yes,” Leonard whispers, cock heavy and pressing against his remaining clothes.

“I want to stretch you out and take my time,” John murmurs after they’ve kissed once more. He is nibbling on Leonard’s neck, teasing the skin as he speaks. “I want all of you, Harry.”

The button pops open, followed by his groan. Leonard stands still while John strips him and bears his naked body to the bedroom.

“How quaint,” John says when he notices the sprinkling of freckles across his shoulders and down his spine. He is behind him now, surveying him like he’s a masterpiece. “Where does this lead?”

It seems the Englishman finds the clusters of concentrated melanized cells ends at the small of his back. There John wets the skin with his tongue, going lower and lower.

“Oh!” Leonard exclaims at the first swipe of wet heat against his hole. It’s a strange sensation, as no one has ever dared to put their mouth _there_.

“Shh,” John assures, albeit muffled.

The Englishman’s tongue continues his siege of the nerve-ridden area, licking, sucking, and working its way inside of him. Leonard is shuddering by the time his entrance is broken open like a fever has consumed him and control has left his body.

A finger works its way in, the beginnings of undoing the tightness that’s always been there. One becomes the beginning of two until there’s a pause and John is fumbling for a jar of Vaseline. The Englishman lays another kiss on his entrance before he soothes a generous amount of the ointment over the puckered flesh.

John turns Leonard around, easing him onto the mattress and spreading his legs. Lips nip at his inseam as the other man’s fingers enter him once more. Leonard groans at the intrusion, relishing the insistent burn. It grows at an alarming rate, faster than any arousal that he’s experienced.

Leonard finds himself fisting John’s ink-black hair, pulling the man’s head back, exposing his pale throat. “John,” he calls, ignoring the clench in his voice. “Please…”

He is pushed to the middle of the bed, where his lover joins him, naked and wanting. John bends his head, taking one of Leonard’s nipples into his mouth and teases the hardening nub while he slicks himself up. Digging his fingers into pale shoulders, Leonard bucks his hips.

He’s had enough of waiting. He wants John _now_ , pulling him by the hips. Leonard finds the hard, slick press of the other man’s shaft against his stomach, its texture like velvet. “I’m going to lose it,” he whispers, the warning cut off.

“I have you,” John assures, slipping his arms underneath Leonard’s knees and pushing them towards his chest. His thumbs stroke the joint as pale blue eyes look upon the man beneath him. “Do not hesitate in telling me to stop, Harry. I want this to be good for you.”

He nods and closes his eyes as the Englishman pushes into him, leaving Leonard breathless. He savors the moment even with all its temporary discomfort and sighs into John’s shoulder. “ _Mon homme_ ,” he murmurs.

“ _Mon cher_ ,” John echoes, slowly going deeper until he hits bottom.

Leonard arches against him, unable to fully appreciate how their bodies fit together. He’s fallen victim to lust and it’s mercies as John begins moving inside of him, riding each thrust as they come. His prostate is beaten so sweetly, sending Leonard deeper into the abyss until everything is black all around him.

Save for John and his anchoring presence.

Even when he touches himself on the Englishman’s gravelly command, Leonard’s body is no longer his own. His nerves are wrecked and his mind has gone blank.

He loses himself to release, not recalling what promises fall from his lips.

Just his own delirious laughter as Leonard McCoy experiences a sexual awakening.)

 

* * *

 

A light drizzle falls upon the street, coating the city in a fine mist as he waits.

Checking the clock on his cell phone, Leonard chuckles at his date’s lateness. _Typical_ , he thinks while a fond smile brightens his face.

The door to the cafe opens, letting in the noise from outside as the host confers with the new arrival. Leonard glances up to find a vibrant woman of eighty-three years of age approaching him. She is beaming when he stands, opening her arms for an embrace.

“Happy birthday, daddy,” Joanna whispers into Leonard’s ear, hugging him tightly.

He returns it, burying his nose in her hair. While she is no longer a screaming, pink thing, his daughter still smells the same—that clean scent of newborns with a hint of fresh flowers. Taking a step back, Leonard looks Joanna over, noticing the variances in her features.

She has his heart-shaped face and lips while her complexion favors Jocelyn’s. There is a trace of his mother’s eyebrows and the dimples they both inherited from his father. While age has gracefully touched his little girl, Joanna Marie McCoy-Prescott is still spry and every bit of a spitfire he remembers from when she was a baby.

Once they are seated, she whips out a green envelope and grins. “For you,” Joanna tells him, sliding it across the table.

“Jo,” Leonard sighs, exasperated. “My little bean,” he chides while retrieving the card from its confines. He reads the inside, laughing at his daughter’s knack for words. “Thank you, baby.”

 

* * *

 

(As the years passed, Leonard credited his unchanging appearance to a combination of a healthy diet, exercise, heredity, and good luck.

“Joanna, we need to meet your grandmother in thirty minutes,” he tells his daughter while she looks over a selection of scarves.

The twenty-year-old waves him off without turning around. “I know, daddy. Give me a second!”

Rolling his eyes, he waits with their shopping bags. Leonard can’t help but indulge his daughter. She is the light of his life and fiercely intelligent; the little girl Jocelyn hoped she would be.

“Leonard?” exclaims a surprised voice.

He glances up to find himself in the company of Christine Chapel, who looks upon him like she’s seen a ghost. Leonard smiles in greeting. “Christine, hello,” he says.

“My god,” the nurse gasps once they’ve hugged. “You haven’t changed a bit!”

Blushing, Leonard motions for Joanna, who comes to his side. “You remember Jo, don’t you?” he inquires, dodging the comment on purpose. “She was just a little thing the last time you saw her.”

“You look so grown up,” Christine tells her.

Joanna beams at this, trading a sly look with her father. “That’s what I keep telling my dad,” she replies, giving Leonard a nudge in the stomach. “But he doesn’t believe me.”

“But you…” Christine begins to say, looking between the two McCoys. “You look like siblings! How is that possible?”

Laughing nervously, Leonard picks up their shopping bags. “You better stop or it’ll go straight to my head, Chris!” he jokes. “Come on, Jo. We need to meet your grandmother.”

As he rushes towards the entrance of the store with Joanna in tow, he hears his daughter holler, “It’s a new face cream from Paris,” Joanna lies. “Made from the royal jelly of the queen bee!”

Leonard realizes that action is required of him, as people begin to take notice and will continue as such. After a year of intense study of his mysterious condition, the doctor comes to the conclusion that there is absolutely no scientific explanation for what has happened to him.

So he decides to flee. Leonard begins to prepare in a fashion that does not raise any more suspicion that’s already cast in his direction.

Before it comes to fruition, he is approached by two men on a rainy evening.

“Dr. McCoy?” one of them inquires as he’s rushing to his car to escape the downpour.

Leonard freezes mid step, his heart hammering inside of his chest. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, attempting to push past them. “You have the wrong person.”

One of the agents grabs him by the bicep. “We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Dr. McCoy,” he says. “We’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

“Why?” Leonard snaps. “I’ve done nothing wrong! You’ve some nerve to bother me at my place of employment; I’m a good American!”

The grip does not loosen. “It couldn’t be helped, sir,” the agent tells him. “This way please.”

Leonard is shuttled to a waiting car with no locks on the back doors. He squeezes his hands into tight fists as the agents drive him through the night. Terror and dread fill him.

He knows that they’ll want to do—to run tests, ask questions he can’t answer, to dissect him like he’s nothing but a science experiment.

The car enters an airfield where a plane awaits them, looming in front of Leonard like he’s walking to the gallows.

“It will be just a minute, Dr. McCoy,” one of the agents assures as they get out of the car, leaving him inside.

Leonard waits until they are preoccupied before he goes about escaping out the trunk of the vehicle. He runs into the darkness, putting as much distance between himself and the agents as possible.

Even as his body protests and burns, he keeps running until he’s safe in his home and gathering his things.

“If anyone contacts you,” Leonard tells Joanna two hours later. They are seated in a used car he purchased with cash. It smells of cigars and mint, neither of which he partakes in. “Tell them I went to Europe on vacation and I never came back.”

Joanna has tears running down her cheeks. “Daddy,” she chokes.

“The next time we see each other, I’ll have a new identity,” he says, pulling his daughter into a hug. Tears fall from his eyes when he closes them. “I’ll always be your daddy, okay, baby?” Leonard pulls back and tucks a lock of hair behind Joanna’s ear. “You’ll just have to introduce me as your friend.”

“But, Daddy,” she cries, pulling Leonard back into a hug.

He swallows back a sob, cursing his strange existence and having to leave his little girl. “It has to be this way, okay, Jo? It’s the only way I can keep you safe.”

Leonard leaves in the dead of night, thus ensuring the freedom and safety of his daughter and himself. He vows to keep moving, changing his name, residence, and appearance every decade.

And to never speak a word of his fate to another living soul.)

 

* * *

 

He watches her continuously shaking the salt onto her meal and forces himself not to roll his eyes.

“I see you’ve already forgotten our little talk about sodium,” Leonard casually comments as he cuts into his salmon.

Joanna shakes her head. “No. I am simply choosing to ignore it.” She sets the shaker down on the table and flashes Leonard a smile, the kind that always seems to get her out of trouble. “Do you have any resolutions for the new year?”

“Age gracefully,” he jokes, much to his daughter’s amusement. Leonard leans back in his seat. “What about you?”

She purses her lips together, furrowing her brow in a manner that is similar to her mother. There are times that Leonard is awed by how nature took the best parts of himself and Jocelyn and their ancestry to create such a beautiful being. He recalls all the times he marveled at her tiny, strong limbs and her laughter.

It never ceases to amaze him, even know that Joanna is a grown woman, who has a family of her own. He is a grandfather and great-grandfather to children he’s never met but has seen pictures of. They all resemble her in a fashion, as well as her husband.

“Read a new book every month,” Joanna announces after much thought.

Leonard raises a brow.

“And reduce my sodium,” she pouts as they go back to their meal.

He turns his head to flag down the waiter for more water, bearing a portion of his neck to his daughter. Leonard hears her gasp, nearly giving him a heart attack, and finds himself staring into her wide eyes. “What?” he asks as the waiter pours water into their glasses.

“You have something on your neck,” Joanna tells him, trying to stifle her laughter. She shakes her head when he dabs at one spot, then another. “It’s not food.”

Leonard scowls. “Then what is it?”

She leans over the table, beckoning him to do the same. Joanna peeks around them to ensure their privacy before whispering and flicking the spot with her finger, “A hickey.”

“Oh, Christ!” he hisses, covering his neck. Leonard feels his face turning scarlet while Joanna’s laughter fills the otherwise quiet restaurant. He grabs an unused spoon and holds it up, using the utensil as a makeshift mirror. In the dinged metal, Leonard can see the unsightly mark’s reflection.

It’s vivid and turning purple from the looks of it and shaped into Jim’s mouth.

“So,” Joanna begins to say once she’s composed herself, “how was _your_ New Year's Eve?”

Leonard groans and hides his face in his hands, letting the spoon drop onto the table with a thud. “God,” he mumbles, his complaint lost in the sound of his daughter’s chuckles.

“Who was he?” she asks after a while, shooting her father a stare that equals the intensity of his own. Rolling her eyes, Joanna scoffs. “Don’t look at me like that; you, yourself, told me about your encounters with the same sex. Anything you get up to won’t shock or appall me.”

He peeks up from his hands, shaking his head. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Fine,” Joanna acquiesces, clearly disappointed. After they resume eating their meal, she tilts her head in the way Leonard remembers from her childhood especially when she was about to do or say something. “Are you going to see him again?”

“Joanna Marie!” he hisses.

She shrugs, which doesn’t have the effect Leonard wanted. “I’m _just_ asking,” Joanna tells him, as she cuts into her meal. “Is that a crime?”

“When we are discussing my sex life—”

Joanna raises a curious brow.

“—or lack thereof,” Leonard continues, scowling.

“Dad,” she whispers. The tone of her voice reminds him of Jocelyn when she grew fondly exasperated with him.

He frowns. “We’re not discussing this topic any further,” Leonard states with a measure of finality. He realizes the possibility of him being too harsh, but there is also nothing to talk about. He feels the stilted air clinging to the table and sighs, setting down his silverware. “It’s just that…what’s the point of pursuing a relationship when there’s no growing old together?”

Joanna reaches across the table to grasp his hand in silence. She offers a comforting smile as her aged fingers rub over his knuckles.

Even she knows that her father has a point.

 

* * *

 

It’s a week into the New Year and the handsome blue-eyed hellion is the furthest thing on Leonard McCoy’s mind.

He is deep in the archives, sorting through footage dating back to the San Francisco Earthquake. The event happened two years before his birth and its devastation was still apparent when he arrived as a little boy. The city was still being rebuilt with neighborhoods still resembling a war zone.

Leonard is debating on setting up the projector to watch a newsreel when Geoff knocks on the door. Another voice joins his colleague’s, though both are muffled by the wooden barrier between them and the room. “Come in!” Leonard shouts, holding up a reel to the light for inspection.

The door opens. “You have a visitor, Nick,” Geoff announces.

“A what?” he questions, setting the reel down on the shelf. Leonard brushes his palms against his slacks as he walks around the racks.

“A visitor,” another voice echoes.

Leonard freezes as he clears the corner, his heart hammering inside of his chest. He finds himself gawking at Jim.

The same Jim whose voice whispered a variety of things not appropriate or meant for polite company into Leonard’s ear.

The same Jim who fucked him into oblivion and beyond, pushing him to pleasure he hadn’t experienced in longer than he’d cared to admit, then catching Leonard when it peaked.

And the same Jim he left sleeping as he made a stealthy exit in the morning.

“Hey, Bones,” the blue-eyed man chirps. He’s smiling, something akin to a beam of light in the dingy room. It would be a lie if Leonard didn’t admit that Jim looks damn good standing in front of him wearing a black shirt and a pair of blue jeans. It’s a very simple ensemble and does not include any ridiculous accessories that Jim’s generation is prone to wear.

The first two buttons of his shirt are undone, revealing a sliver of Jim’s chest. Leonard remembers that part of his body well for he spent a good deal of time running his hands and mouth over it while the younger man moaned under him.

Leonard is certain he’s turning scarlet by the way his cheeks burn and how Geoff is looking at him all curious-like. His colleague’s gaze shifts between the unknowing Jim and Leonard and back again. “I’ll leave you two,” Geoff tells them before doing just that.

“How did you find me?” he asks as soon as the door is shut.

Jim shrugs before hopping up onto a nearby table. “Your friend, Janice, thinks you _really_ need to get out more,” he mentions ever so casually. He turns an innocent smile upon Leonard. “The event coordinator is a good friend of mine. Anyways, I remember you talking to the violinist, so I asked for her number and gave her a call.”

“What?”

“You really need a cellphone, Bones,” Jim continues, picking up a newsreel and squinting to read the worn title. “And who even has an answering machine, let alone a landline in this day and age? Anyways, we chatted about you and she mentioned you worked here.”

Leonard blinks, stunned before realizing that Jim is standing right in front of him and handling a piece of the archive without protective gloves. “Hey!” he growls. “Put that—put that down!”

He reaches for the reel, snatching it out of Jim’s hand and sets it back on the table. “That is a historical document,” Leonard tells him.

Jim leans over to read the title, raising a brow. “Little Suzy Ballet School Holiday Pageant, 1954?” he deadpans, smirking. “Now _that’s_ something you ought to send to the Smithsonian!”

“Are you familiar with the anti-stalking laws in California?” the older man asks, trying not to let Jim’s infectious smile win him over. Leonard knows the dangers of that type of smile and refuses to fall victim to it once again.

“Which is why I called your friend,” Jim tells him, undeterred. He scrubs the back of his hair with one of his hands. “Also, camping outside of someone’s place with binoculars and a mayonnaise jar isn’t really my thing.”

Leonard huffs an annoyed sigh. “And what is your thing, dare I ask?”

“Funny you should,” the younger man replies. “I came here to _ask_ you out on a date. You know, one of those social or romantic appointments or engagements where we stare awkwardly at each other from across a restaurant table.”

He a notices a blush crawling over Jim’s cheeks, something Leonard reckons happens when he’s nervous. For all of the younger man’s confidence and charm, he is still human and prone to the same weakness. “I’ve heard of them,” Leonard says.

“Great!” Jim exclaims. He nudges him in his side. “I was beginning to think that you were a shut-in, which is totally fine. I tend to do that sometimes…”

Leonard watches the kid rambling and decides that while he’s a bit annoyed that Janice gave out his information, the attention—especially from the likes of Jim—is flattering. “Do you want to meet at Taverna on Friday, say seven o’clock?”

“I thought I was supposed to be asking you,” the younger man remarks.

“I figured I’d beat you to the punch.”

Jim erupts in laughter, the physical reaction causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle. It’s undeniably charming especially when paired with the sound he emits. “Taverna on Friday, it is,” he agrees once he’s able to compose himself. “I’ll make the reservation for under my name.”

“Which is?” Leonard teases.

“Jim Kirk,” the younger man says, introducing himself as he extends his hand.

Leonard shakes it. “Nick Harvey.” He realizes they are lingering, neither one of them eager to let go.

“So Friday,” Jim says, almost whispering.

“Friday,” Leonard echoes before deciding to give Jim his cell phone number.

 

* * *

 

The restaurant is hidden in an alley between Sutter and Pine streets.

It has a European feel, despite the office buildings looming overhead. Delicate lights are strung above the walkways, transforming Belden Place into a charming nook in the Financial District of San Francisco.

Leonard finds the place easily enough and is pleased to see that his date is punctual. He takes a moment in the doorway to appreciate Jim caught unawares as he chats animatedly with the bartender. If anything, Jim has an uncanny ability to befriend everyone he encounters, something that Leonard finds begrudgingly attractive.

“Bones!” his date exclaims, waving at him. Jim bids the bartender farewell and hurries over to Leonard, beaming as he looks him over. “Glad you could make it!”

He returns the smile before being swept upstairs to their table. Leonard has dined here many times over the years and always enjoyed the restaurant's ambiance; intimate without being too cheesy, low lit but still able to see your dining partner, and not so loud that one must shout in order to be heard.

Once Leonard and Jim have placed their order, he smirks at the other man. “So, Mr. Kirk, what is it that you do?”

“You didn’t Google me?” Jim inquires while he runs a finger over the rim of his water glass. He seems surprised—pleasantly so—by this revelation. “Don’t tell me,” he says with a grin. “You don’t own a computer!”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “No. I’d rather hear about you from you,” he fires back. “That’s the point of a date.”

“And here I thought it was so I wouldn’t be home alone on a Friday night,” the younger man teases. He leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. “Okay then. You know my name.”

“I do.”

Jim pulls a mock pout before winking. “You asked for it,” he teases before beginning to tell Leonard about himself.

His family is from an Iowan town called Riverside and it’s just as picturesque as one would imagine—lush, rolling fields; farmhouses, children riding their bicycles while their parents looked on. Jim, however, was not born there, but in San Francisco.

“It wasn’t planned,” he explains over their appetizer. “My parents and older brother, Sam, were out here visiting my godfather when I decided to speed things up.”

Leonard snorts back a laugh. “How early were you?”

“A month,” Jim answers after thinking about it. “My dad says I came into the world making a racket.”

“An observation that still stands,” Leonard teases, earning a flick of the younger man’s fingers against his wrist before settling over the joint.

To feel Jim’s thumb soothing the sting is more arousing that Leonard cares to admit. He meets the other man’s eyes, admiring the crystalline coloring of them.

“Anyways,” Jim says after a while, shaking his head to snap him and Leonard out of their reverie. He continues his story, only pausing when the waiter comes with their meal.

Over the course of dinner, Leonard learns that Jim went to school at Berkeley, where he met Nyota Uhura, his best friend and business partner. There, they discovered an algorithm that allows computer systems to communicate more efficiently.

“So we patented it,” he continues. “She manages the business with Spock, her husband, while I sit on the boards of various charities.”

It’s long after dinner and they are walking outside of the Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park. Jim had insisted on them going there for a surprise, which in turn peaked Leonard’s interest.

“You’re a good-doer?” Leonard questions as his date escorts him through the glass doors at the front of the building.

Jim shrugs at the label. “I try to be,” he admits. “What’s the point of having a lot of money if you can’t _do_ something with it?”

“Most people in your position would buy houses, fancy cars…” the older man comments.

“Living in San Francisco makes having a car pointless,” Jim rebuts. He motions Leonard to follow him through the empty building.

It’s strange to be inside without anyone else, save for several night guards. Their footsteps echo loudly when it’s not Jim’s voice. Leonard finds that he could listen to the young man for hours without tiring of him. For all his cockiness, the kid is intelligent, kind, and interesting. It’s clear to Leonard that he adores his family which includes his parents, his brother, Samuel, and his wife, who is expecting a baby in the summer.

They stop outside of the planetarium, where Jim holds the door open for Leonard. “After you,” he jokes.

“What have you’ve got up your sleeve?” Leonard asks as they go inside the Morrison Planetarium, where he hears classical music faintly playing. He looks to the center of the room, quickly noticing a blanket that’s been laid out along with a bucket filled with chilled beer. “Ah.”

Jim bounces on the balls of his feet, looking like the cat who ate the canary. “Do you like it?”

“I feel like I’m being seduced,” he replies as Jim takes his hand and leads him over to the blanket.

The younger man chuckles. “We already did that,” he snickers, bumping his hip into Leonard’s. “Come on. Grab a beer and take a seat, Bones.”

“Kid,” Leonard huffs in warning even as he goes to sit while Jim grabs them each a bottle and uncaps them. He sips his beverage, slightly confused on what his date plans on doing next when the younger man picks up a remote.

Clicking it, the lights die down and they are shrouded in darkness until the planetarium’s domed roof comes alight with the Milky Way Galaxy.

“I was going to have a car take us out to Marin after dinner, but it was too foggy for star gazing,” Jim explains. He sounds as if he’s in awe of the projection.

“So you brought it to us,” Leonard finishes, spying the constellation Sagittarius within the Galactic Center as they progress across the ceiling and turns to Jim.

Even in semi-darkness, the other man is stunning. His profile appears soft due to his generous lips and the neat nub of his nose, though his dark brows keep him from looking too pretty. As the projections glint off Jim’s expressive eyes, Leonard leans closer to nuzzle his nose against his date’s cheek before moving to a spot he recalls from their night together.

His lips brush against Jim’s neck which earns a groan of pleasure. Leonard grins, running the sharp edges of his teeth over the tender skin before bestowing a kiss on the area. He applies more pressure with his mouth, watching as Jim bucks his hips in the darkness.

With steady movements, Leonard runs his hand down the younger man’s torso while unbuttoning his shirt. Jim sighs as each one is undone and whispers that silly nickname like a prayer.

“I thought about you every day,” his date confesses, pressing his cheek to the top of Leonard’s head. “Every single day, regardless of what I was doing. I wondered where you disappeared to and if I’d see you again.”

Leonard slips his hand inside of Jim’s shirt to feel the warm skin beneath it. His fingers graze over the trail of fine hairs that leads below the waist of the younger man’s pants up to his abdominal muscles. He licks a stripe down Jim’s neck towards his clavicle as his hand caresses his pectorals.

He delights in his date’s moan and the way his body reacts to him. Jim stutters a breath, shivering as Leonard’s hand ventures back down.

“You have no idea what you’ve done to me,” Jim tells him, chuckling. “I’d lay in bed at night and imagine you riding me like you did on New Years’. God, Bones, you looked so fucking hot…I have no idea how I was able to keep it together.”

Leonard uses his other hand to expose the other man’s shoulder, using the opportunity to drag his teeth over the skin he uncovers. Jim is salty on his tongue, mixed in with the natural scent of him and his cologne. He sucks a love bite while his fingers undo the clasp of the younger man’s belt.

It falls open, as does the zipper of his pants. The metal tab seems to yearn for Leonard to undo them, wanting him to discover what lies beneath the tailored fabric.

Jim thrusts up into his palm, his erection pronounced and twitching under the older man’s hand. Leonard drags his fingers over the clothed bulge, massaging it slowly while he goes to kiss his date’s mouth. Jim accepts it greedily and pulls Leonard to him, hands fisting his shirt.

He pushes the younger man’s underwear and pants down to mid-thigh before Leonard takes Jim in hand. A whine vibration in his mouth as he begins to stroke the other man, using precum to lubricate the way. Leonard nips at Jim’s bottom lip, pulling back to allow his date’s moans to fill the room. “Like that, darlin’? Is that how you want it?”

“Oh, fuck,” Jim groans as his hips meet each movement. “ _Bones_ …”

Leonard’s thumb traces over the flared edges of Jim’s cockhead, savoring the feel of silky flesh against his skin. He steals a glance at the younger man, taking in the breathtaking beauty of him under Leonard’s thrall; arching under him to gain more friction with his eyes screwed tightly shut.

Like Jim is losing himself to Leonard’s careful ministrations as he drags the flat of his palm up and over his cockhead. “Bones,” the younger man whines, voice shattering. “ _Please_ , Bones.”

Leonard’s grip on him grows stronger, faster as he increases his movements for Jim’s benefit. He can feel his lover’s pleasure build with how closely they are pressed together; every twitch, every clench, every knot coming undone.

“Let me hear you, darlin’,” he whispers sweetly.

Jim is all breathy moans while his body climbs the first wave of orgasm. His fingers dig into the fabric of the older man’s shirt, nails biting the skin underneath. “Oh, _shit_ ,” he cries as he’s pushed over the edge.

In the dim light of the planetarium, Leonard watches as Jim pulsates in his hand, cum spurting obscenely on fair skin and getting tangled into fine hairs. It gives way to smaller bursts that wet his shaft and Leonard’s fingers. Jim’s shaking hand slides to his wrist, signaling for him to stop.

The feel of the younger man’s heaving chest and his warm breath against Leonard’s neck makes him want in a way he hasn’t experienced in years.

“Darlin’,” he whispers, pressing a kiss against Jim’s sweaty forehead. He hears a sound of acknowledgment. “I want to feel you cumming while I’m inside of you.”

Jim whines, blindly reaching for Leonard.

“Can I do that?” he asks, his lips touching his lover’s cheek. “Can I take you home and fuck you?” Their lips graze together, all slick and heated. “Can I, Jim?”

“Fuck yes,” Leonard hears the younger man breathe before they fall into another kiss.

 

* * *

 

He listens to the sound of Jim’s breathing as they lay in bed.

Leonard stares up at the ceiling, darkened by the lateness of the hour, before turning his eyes to the sleeping man next to him. The street lamps illuminate some of his lax features, caressing the curve of his face and neck while Jim slumbers on.

“I can feel you watching me,” he mumbles, lips twitching in amusement as he blinks his eyes open.

Shrugging, Leonard scoots closer to him until their bodies touch and he raises an arm, beckoning Jim to curl into him. “I was admiring my handiwork,” Leonard admits.

Jim’s exhale rolls over his bare chest as he settles himself against the crevice of Leonard’s side. “Hm, I bet you were,” he says tiredly. His fingers walk across the doctor’s stomach. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Not used to being in a bed that’s not my own.”

He nods, tightening his hold on Leonard with his arm and a leg. In retrospect, Jim’s sense of entitlement over his person is endearing. Where anyone else who dared to do the same would be met with annoyance, Leonard finds it enjoyable.

Almost as enjoyable as slipping inside of Jim’s hot passage and finding what made the younger man cry out in pleasure. While they fucked, Leonard felt as if he was a conquistador searching for hidden treasure in the wilds of Mexico or Peru.

The freckle dotted skin beneath his own was the trail while Jim’s nipples and navel the enticing sights along the way. The blue of the young man’s eyes were the jewels, and his wanting mouth, the priceless artifact Leonard chose to seek out for himself. Every moan and whisper of his name uttered from Jim’s lips was a prayer to his ears; Leonard answered in kind.

As both of their bodies quaked in the aftermath, Leonard felt the familiar pang of loss. He hadn’t been back in San Francisco for long, but he knew that there would be a time when he would have to leave.

A time where Jim would no longer be his.

“Everything okay?”

Leonard turns to Jim, finding the younger man searching his face with concern etched into his features. He runs a finger over his wrinkled brow, aching to soothe it from his lover’s skin. “I’m fine,” Leonard whispers. “Why do you ask?”

“You look like you’re plotting your escape again,” Jim tries to tease. His tongue runs over his lips as he readjusts his head, showing a bit of vulnerability. “Will you still be here in the morning?”

“Of course,” Leonard answers even though there is a small voice in his head asking how long he will be able to keep that promise. “Why? Are you having other visitors this evening?”

Jim snorts, tugging Leonard closer to him. He slings a leg over his hip and tickles the other man’s side. “You caught me, Bones,” Jim chuckles, ducking in to kiss him. “Having an orgy in about thirty minutes. Sorry that I forgot to tell you.”

“An orgy, you say?” Leonard mutters against his lips as he caressing Jim’s backside. “Well, I guess I should be quick.”

They’re rolling around under the sheets, touching as much skin as either man can. Jim is searching for more condoms while Leonard sucks a love bite just under his clavicle, matching its twin on the other side.

Sex between them is faster this time, filled with desperation and pure need. Leonard fucks Jim hard, giving into his wanton pleas and digs his fingers into slender hips. There might be bruises in the morning, a telltale sign of Leonard’s existence, but neither of them seems to care.

When it’s over, the pull of sleep quickly follows and for the first time in years, Leonard doesn’t feel the need to run.

Just the desire to feel Jim in his arms.

 

* * *

 

Dating is a foreign concept for Leonard McCoy.

His romantic entanglements don’t usually last beyond a night or two, for his partners will want more. It’s only natural and he can’t blame them. To build a connection with another is natural and once upon a time, Leonard sought it out himself.

He found it all too briefly with Jocelyn and with a handful of other men and women; none of it made a difference. They were people who intrigued him and made Leonard forget the curse upon him in the time they were together. Each partner varied in terms of aesthetics, though they all had one thing in common: they made Leonard’s world more beautiful in whatever way they could.

Whether it be with artistic talent, vast intelligence, and the kindest of hearts…

Jim Kirk, he finds, embodies all of these things. From his wit and sometimes childish sense of humor to the way he makes every single person around feel at ease, Leonard wants to wrap himself in the proverbial blanket that is his blue-eyed hellion.

So Leonard McCoy finds himself doing something he swore off all those years ago.

He falls in love.

 

* * *

 

It’s the ninetieth day Leonard has woken up with Jim’s face pressed into the nape of his neck.

Unwillingly, he crawls back to consciousness before yawning into his pillow and blinking his eyes open. They are in his apartment, having decided to stay in the night before. Leonard used to fret about having someone who wasn’t Joanna inside of his home; they would ask questions or, even worse, find evidence of his otherworldly existence.

Leonard made sure to come up with a convincing cover story for his elusiveness, using bits of truths and some modifications to keep people at a distance.

With Jim, he allows himself to let his guard down. The stories and experiences Leonard speaks of really happened, though he makes the appropriate changes to keep with the times. He tells his boyfriend of his childhood and of his daughter who is now known as his grandmother; all of this is spoken while Jim listens intently.

The younger man never pries and respects Leonard’s privacy in a way that he’s not accustomed to. Anyone else would think that he’s hiding something, but it’s as if Jim seems to understand. It’s too much to hope, Leonard realizes, though he doesn’t stop him from it.

He goes to move from under the blankets in order to the use the bathroom when Jim’s octopus-like grip stops him. Leonard pries his boyfriend’s fingers from his person, taking the opportunity to kiss the first knuckle on Jim’s pinkie. He turns his body to view his sleeping lover and presses his palm against his cheek, feeling his stubble covered cheek.

His boyfriend makes an incoherent sound, something between a sigh and snuffling. Jim tilts his face against the pillow and settles back down; a cue for Leonard to go about his business. He fetches a t-shirt from his dresser, pulling it on as he pads to the bathroom. It’s a typical San Francisco morning, both foggy and chilly with a hint of drizzle.

Beyond the windows of his apartment, the city is blanketed in a shroud of grey and Leonard is thankful that it’s Saturday. He can go back to bed and sleep in with Jim glommed to his person.

For all of his boyfriend’s excitable energy, Jim Kirk is _not_ a morning person. He prefers to sleep late and tries to convince Leonard to do the same. There are times that the younger man is successful, though not even his pout and bright blue eyes can keep Leonard in bed for long.

Once finished in the bathroom, he slips between sheets and finds Jim’s body with his own. Leonard marvels at how well the younger man fits against him as if every curve of them was made to perfect slot together. Peering over his boyfriend’s shoulder, he watches while dark lashes break over Jim’s cheekbones.

The other man stirs, pushing himself into Leonard with a grunt. “What time is it?” Jim asks, not bothering to open his eyes. He rolls onto his back, smacking his lips together.

“Early,” Leonard assures.

“Go back to sleep,” his boyfriend mumbles as he blindly pulls Leonard to his chest and holds him there.

Leonard snorts. “But—”

“Shh,” Jim counters, fingers snaking under the hem of the other man’s shirt to touch skin. “Shh…sleep, Bones.”

He falls silent and listens to his boyfriend’s heart beating against his ear. The steady _thump, thump, thump_ eventually lulls Leonard into a doze, held safely in Jim’s warm embrace. The scent of his lover envelops him, as it always does.

On the rare occasion that Jim isn’t around, it lingers and reminds Leonard of the young man who has become a fixture in his strange existence.

Several hours later, he finds himself walking along the waterfront at Crissy Field with Jim by his side. Their bellies are full with a late breakfast while the younger man is nursing a cup of coffee.

“What are your plans for next weekend?” Jim asks, wrapping his arm around Leonard’s waist.

“Hadn’t thought that far ahead, to be honest,” he replies, shoving his hand into the pocket of his jacket. “Why do you ask, darlin’?”

Jim shrugs, bringing the lid of his coffee towards his mouth. “My parents are throwing an anniversary party for my godfathers,” he mentions, trying to sound blasé about the idea. “I wanted to see if you’d like to come, but it’s no big deal…”

Leonard figured out very early on that for all of Jim’s brass exuberance, he is just as insecure as the next person. He hides it with well-honed mannerisms, though the younger man is learning that his lover can see through it.

“You want me to meet your parents,” he states.

Jim’s cheeks are flushing. “Only if you want to,” he says quickly. “We could do it another time, Bones.”

“Darlin’,” Leonard sighs, keeping his boyfriend in place by grasping both of his shoulders. He looks Jim in the eye and smiles. “I’d love to.”

Jim blinks. “You do?” he questions. “Really?” A few heartbeats later, his mind catches up and a broad smile breaks out across his face.

Leonard is pulled into a kiss that tastes of relief and the coffee on Jim’s tongue. He sinks into it and buries his fingers in the windblown locks of his boyfriend’s hair. The moment is broken by Jim holding him as tightly as possible while he buries his face into Leonard’s shoulder.

“God, I love you,” Jim says.

Those words should send a thrill of terror down his spine, as they’ve done in years past. Instead, the sentiment settles in Leonard’s body and floods it with warmth.

“I love you, too,” he answers with certainty.

 

* * *

 

The Kirks reside in a Tudor style house that’s charmingly nestled into the Sonoma Mountains.

“So you grew up here?” Leonard asks as Jim drives down the redwood-lined road that leads to the residence. He catches the rooftops and chimneys of their neighbor’s homes.

Keeping his eyes on the road, Jim shakes his head. “Nah, we were in the city until Sam and I left for college,” he tells him. “Mom and Dad wanted to retire to a quiet place; San Francisco living didn’t agree with them after a while.”

“Do your godfathers live up here?”

“Chris would lose his mind, though I’m pretty sure that Phil would love it,” Jim says, grinning. “They still live in the city, just north of the Panhandle; got this Victorian they renovated a few years ago.”

Jim continues talking about his family, the smile on his face never leaving. Leonard wonders what the rest of the Kirks are like and who his boyfriend takes after. Regardless, it’s quite clear to him that Jim grew up in the loving home Leonard wished he could have provided Joanna.

Turning onto a driveway, the car takes them towards what Leonard can only describe as a mansion. Several cars are parked out front, one of which is being attended by a man that must be a Kirk. Jim taps the horn, earning this man’s attention.

Samuel Kirk needs no introduction for he has the same blinding grin and similar facial features. There are slight differences that Leonard notes - Sam’s lips are thinner, his chin more pointed, and his eyes are brown. “You must be Nick,” the elder Kirk child says when they get out of the car. He extends his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Sam.”

Leonard shakes his hand. “Likewise,” he replies, returning the infectious smile.

Jim slings his arm over Sam’s shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze. “Where’s the baby incubator?”

“Inside,” his brother answers, rolling his eyes. “And, Jim, don’t let her hear you say that!”

Jim bounces off and disappears inside of the house, leaving Sam and Leonard alone in the driveway. The former snorts after him and turns to the latter with a shrug.

“Little brothers,” Sam comments.

“I’m an only child.”

Sam groans in envy. “Count your blessings,” he tells Leonard. “Come on, let’s bring your luggage in and save my wife before Jim starts to annoy her.”

Leonard expects a bloodbath upon entering the Kirk house and braces himself until he hears laughter coming from another room. He follows Sam’s lead and sets his duffle bag down by the staircase before setting off after his boyfriend’s brother.

He finds himself in the doorway of a kitchen where Jim is rubbing the feet of a pregnant woman. They are taking good-natured jabs at each other while Winona and George Kirk continue cutting up vegetables for dinner. He sees where their sons get their good looks; a smile from the former and their height from the latter. Sam and Winona have the same brown eyes while Jim is most certainly cut from the same cloth as George.

It’s Winona that notices Leonard first, making an excited noise as she sets down her knife and bounds over to him, arms open for a hug. “I finally get to meet you,” she exclaims, pulling him into an embrace. She takes a step back, smiling as she addresses her youngest son. “He’s so handsome, Jimmy! How did you convince Nick to date you?”

“Ah, come _on_ ,” Jim counters with a scowl. “I’m _amazing_! Come on, Bones, tell them!”

Leonard shrugs. “I’m in it for the money,” he deadpans, sending everyone but Jim into a fit of laughter. He softens the blow by winking at his boyfriend.

“I like you already,” Winona tells Leonard. “Come on in and have a seat. We’re just waiting for Chris and Phil to show up.”

He is warmly welcomed into the Kirk fold, taking a seat next to Jim and placing a kiss on his temple. They keep the personal questions to a comfortable minimum, much to his silent thanks, and seem to take an interest in their youngest child’s partner. When the Kirks aren’t asking Leonard about himself, they chatter on about everything from the San Francisco Giants to deciding on baby names.

“We have a shortlist,” Aurelan explains, cradling her rotund belly, “of boys’ names. It makes things a bit easier because Sam and I couldn’t agree on any names for girls.”

Sam makes an offended sound. “Hey!”

“So sensitive,” she teases. Her feet are still propped up on Jim’s lap. “How did you ever put up with him?”

Jim shrugs as he rubs at a knot located in Aurelan’s arch. “It was hard, let me tell you,” he mutters, glancing up when his sister-in-law flexes her foot. “Did that hurt?”

“The opposite,” she assures with a gentle smile. “Don’t worry about me, honey. Just keep on keepin’ on.”

Jim wrinkles his nose at her. “Yes ma’am!” he says, continuing with his task. “How many people are coming to the party, mom?”

“About seventy,” Winona tells him. “Speaking of which, where are those two?”

George, who has his arms wrapped around his wife, shrugs. “Chris probably thought he saw Leo and made Phil pull over.”

“Leo?” Leonard inquires.

Jim leans over to whisper in his ear. “Chris is an astronomer,” he explains. “Like, he discovered this comet that was supposed to come back ten years ago—Leo C 1981.”

“And it didn’t,” Leonard finishes.

His boyfriend nods. “Yeah and every year we take bets on whether or not Leo will show up.”

“That’s terrible,” he chuckles, bringing a hand to Jim’s nape and caresses it. “I feel bad for the guy.”

Jim leans into the touch. “Don’t feel too bad for Chris,” he assures, leaning closer to Leonard’s cheek. Nuzzling it with his nose, Jim kisses it.

As the younger man’s lips brush against Leonard’s skin, there is a commotion at the door followed by the sound of two men. It seems that the last guests have arrived. Everyone, save for Leonard and Jim, jumps to their feet to go greet them.

Jim uses the moment of privacy to properly kiss Leonard. It’s akin to a snowflake drifting upon the breeze; slow, languid with a touch of impatience.

“James!” Sam bellows from the entryway. “Quit making out with your boyfriend and come introduce him to Phil and Chris!”

Over the sound of Jim’s groans, there is a chorus of laughter. Leonard snorts into the younger man’s neck, unable to suppress his amusement. “Don’t be like that, darlin’,” he says, pecking Jim’s cheek. “We can always continue where we left off later.”

“That’s wishful thinking, Bones,” Jim tells him as they amble out of the kitchen. He links their hands together, giving it a squeeze. “Are you ready to run for the hills?”

Leonard shakes his head. “Never. Come on, let’s meet these godfathers of yours before they launch a search party.”

The group of people standing by the front door is easy to find as they are numerous and boisterous. It reminds him of family gathers from when he was a child; memories filled with warmth and the scent of peaches on drifting on the summer breeze. He would play with his cousins while the adults sipped on their peach tea and talked about things that didn’t concern children.

“Okay, you guys,” Jim calls as they turn the corner, “you have to promise to be nice!”

“That is a promise I can’t keep, kiddo,” a man’s voice says, trying to stifle his laughter.

Jim casts a long-suffering glance at Leonard and rolls his eyes. “You’re a terrible godfather, Phil!” he exclaims to a man with greying hair and dark brown eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses.

This person, Phil, is about Jim’s height with a football player’s build and a surfer’s tanned skin. Age has not touched him as it does to all men, leaving his face relatively free of wrinkles save for the crow’s feet at his eyes. He cracks a smile, breaking away from Winona to give the youngest member of the Kirk family a bear hug. “I am the best godfather,” Phil tells Jim when they break apart, slinging an arm over the younger man’s shoulder. “Just don’t tell your other one that or he’ll have my neck,” he stage-whispers before turning his attention to Leonard.

“This is Bones,” Jim says, gesturing at Leonard.

He watches Phil’s brows rise in curiosity as he extends his hand. “Nick Harvey,” Leonard corrects. “And don’t ask.”

“Phil Boyce,” he replies, smirking. “And I won’t. Jim is a few crayons short, if you get my drift.”

“Hey!” his boyfriend retorts with a truly spectacular scowl as he pushes Phil away from him. “Where’s the best godfather in the world? Did you leave Chris somewhere?”

Phil rolls his eyes. “He’s getting something out of the trunk,” he says before turning his attention back to Leonard. “So how did you meet this one?”

“Jim stuck his hand where it didn’t belong,” Leonard tells him, earning a snort of laughter from Sam. “He shoved himself in between the elevator doors.”

The youngest Kirk emits a sound of protest. “That’s not even what happened, Bones! I was romantic; we saw each other from across the room and he was awestruck by my smile.”

“And _then_ he shoved his hand into the elevator doors,” Leonard adds as he slips his arm around Jim’s waist, tugging him close. “That was before he ran out into the street to stop my cab.”

More laughter and some teasing follow, drowning out the sound of the front door opening. Leonard certainly feels the cool breeze momentarily drifting inside of the house, but pays no mind to it. His attention is solely on Jim, whose cheeks are turning pink in embarrassment and he takes pity on him, leaning in to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek when he hears someone speak.

“Leo?” a man calls, sounding as if he’s seen a ghost.

Everyone turns to the source of the voice, a man with wavy brown hair threaded with streaks of silver and eyes the colors of the sea. He is classically handsome—the very picture of the All-American boy—and purses his lips in the most familiar way.

A brief flash of a man—younger than the one standing before him— enters Leonard’s mind with his cheerful grin and the sensual way his lips curled at the corners when he was about to kiss him. A man he hasn’t seen since a rare sunny day in Golden Gate Park over forty-five years ago.

Christopher Pike— _Chris_ —a medical student Leonard met while he was traveling around the English countryside. A man that he left waiting on a bench while he asked the cab driver to go back to his apartment as Leonard tried to keep the tears at bay.

God he had loved him. So much, too much. He couldn’t get enough of Chris and his easy grin or his body; everything about that young man tore down his carefully constructed walls until he knew that he had to leave.

 _Fuck_ , Leonard thinks as his mind begins to work again and Jim says, “No, this is my boyfriend, Nick.”

Chris blinks, his gaze never leaving Leonard’s face as he sets a suitcase down and takes a step closer. “You look…” he begins to say before stopping. He licks his lips while he tries to piece this strange puzzle together, eventually scratching his head. “You look _just_ like an old friend of mine; Leonard McCoy.”

“That was my dad,” he replies softly. Leonard turns to Jim, offering an uncomfortable smile. “My real dad, he passed away before I was born. David Harvey adopted me when he married my mama.”

His boyfriend’s fingers brush against his own, curling around them until their palms are pressed together. The touch, however benign it is, unfurls the anxiety clawing at Leonard’s chest.

“He died?” Chris gasps.

When he spares a glance at him, Leonard finds that Chris’ face has gone pale at the news of his own apparent death. His former partner looks like he’s in physical pain as if this information has stabbed him directly in the heart and he’s barely hanging on. Leonard immediately feels guilty for lying—hell, he’s been lying for seventy-nine years—and the want of telling the truth is pushing at his throat.

“Are you okay?” Phil quietly asks as he goes to touch Chris’ elbow.

Chris nods, his eyes never leaving Leonard’s face. “Yeah,” he assures once he’s swallowed. He turns to Phil and forces himself to smile. “Just surprised.”

“Well,” Jim says as he tugs on Leonard’s hand. “I’m going to show Bones around the property because this, you know…awkward. Bye!”

He follows behind his boyfriend’s quick movements, finding himself on the front steps of the house and away from the stifling air from inside.

Away from the raw panic surging brewing within.

 

* * *

 

(It is 1968 when Leonard first looks into a pair of sea blue eyes and makes the acquaintance of one Chris Pike.

He is sitting in his car on a remote road in the wilds of the English Countryside, struggling to get his engine to turn over. The sun is bearing down on him and if he doesn’t get things moving along, Leonard will have one hell of a tan and be late for work come Monday.

“Stupid…fucking,” he curses, not realizing that he is about to have an observer.

The stranger watches him for a few minutes before he clears his throat. “You know, you keep doing that, you’ll flood the engine,” a man says.

Leonard jumps, his shout drowned out by his elbow pressing down on the car’s horn. He turns and finds himself in the company of a man with short light brown hair—none of that long haired nonsense—and brilliantly colored eyes. He could get lost in the blue depths of those irises and drown in them.

“What?” he asks, temporarily rendered dumb as he takes in the sight of this stranger. Leonard thinks him so good looking that it hurts to even stare; that someone pieced the young man together to destroy every last ounce of his common sense.

The man smiles, motioning to the car. “You’re going to flood the engine,” he repeats as he holds Leonard’s gaze.

“Uh, thanks,” he says. “Thank you for the useful tip.”

He laughs at Leonard’s sarcasm, causing the latter’s heart to stutter a beat. A blush crawls across Leonard’s cheeks as he huffs a defeated sigh. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I’ve done everything I could to get this thing started.”

“Ah,” the young man says in sympathy. He sets his things—a backpack and a bicycle—down and rubs his hands on the seat of his jeans. “What you probably need is a push-start.” Walking around the back of the car, he rolls up his sleeves and reveals toned arms. “Just lose the brake and when I push, pop your clutch and you’ll take off. Got it?”

Leonard nods. “Okay,” he replies as he follows the stranger’s instructions. Peeking at him through the rearview mirror, he watches the young man nod. “Ready when you are.”

He starts the convertible as his new acquaintance pushes. “Pop the clutch!” the stranger shouts over the noise. It takes a moment, but soon the car is rolling forward as its engine roars to life. Leonard hears the young man whoop in delight.

He steps on the brakes and turns back to the stranger, motioning him to come. “Do you need a ride?” he asks once faced with him again.

The young man—Christopher Pike or Chris, as he prefers—is from Baltimore and on a summer tour of Europe while on vacation from school. “I’m going back to Stanford in the fall,” he explains as they drive. “Studying to be a surgeon.”

Leonard raises a brow. “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.”

“It’s what my parents want,” Chris admits with a shrug.

“Well, what do you want?”

Chris squints at Leonard, wetting his lips. “Aside from wanting to know your name?” he teases. “Astronomy, but I dunno what my folks will think about it.”

“Have you asked them?”

“No.”

Leonard snorts, shaking his head in amusement. “Maybe you’ll be surprised,” he says. Then he does something he’d promised himself that he would never do. “And my name is Leonard McCoy; my friends call me Leo.”

“Leo, huh?” Chris says. “I like it.”)

 

* * *

 

“Hey, you okay?” Jim asks as he gives Leonard’s hand a squeeze.

He blinks, turning his head. “Huh?”

“Are. You. Okay?” his boyfriend repeats, slow and deliberate. Jim stops in the middle of the trail they’re walking along and pulls Leonard to him. “Do I need to call a doctor, Bones?”

“No,” Leonard answers. “I’m fine; just…processing.”

Jim nods in sympathy. “Yeah, that must have been weird.” A moment goes by and he speaks again, “I didn’t know that David wasn’t your real dad. Or birth dad; it’s birth dad, right?” His cheeks flush. “Fuck! I’ve put my foot in my mouth… _just_ like my godfather.”

“Darlin’,” Leonard sighs, pulling his boyfriend against his chest and kissing him between his brows, “it’s fine. My dad is the only father I knew, though it’s not something I tell people often. Complicates things, you know? I might have been Leonard McCoy’s child, but I was David Harvey’s son.”

Jim wraps his arms around Leonard’s waist, smiling. “And he did a damn good job raising you,” he adds while brushing his lips over the other man’s jaw.

“Did he now?” Leonard questions to which his boyfriend makes a sound of agreement. His eyes drift shut as Jim’s mouth starts a trail of gently pressed kisses.

The sounds of nature—wind blowing through trees, birds chirping, water babbling in the creek nearby—slowly fade until all remains are his and Jim’s breathing. Leonard buries his fingers in the younger man’s hair and brings him closer, capturing his lips with his own. As they stand in the middle of the trail, Leonard thinks that he will never tire of kissing Jim or hearing him saying that ridiculous nickname.

He goes to nibble on his boyfriend’s earlobe, giving them a chance to breathe, when Jim whispers, “I know a place where we can have some privacy.”

“You do?” Leonard chuckles. He traces his tongue over a particularly sensitive spot, delighting in the other man’s shiver. “Tell me about this place.”

Jim snorts in reply and takes him by the hand, leading Leonard back towards the house. “It’s nothing glamorous and you probably don’t want to make too much noise,” he explains. A mischievous grin flashes over his face. “But I’ll get to have you all to myself.”

“Your sense of entitlement over my person is both endearing _and_ disturbing,” Leonard jokes as they continue to walk.

It turns out the place Jim has in mind is a storage room above the garage. Leonard has half a mind to start complaining when he sees the thick layer of dust covering everything in their path, but soon it becomes an afterthought.

Jim is all over him, kissing and guiding Leonard towards a sheet covered object. Their fingers are unzipping zippers, loosening buttons, and discard jackets until they’re both bent over the surface of a table. As Jim shoves two slick fingers into Leonard, something occurs to him.

“Did you _really_ introduce me to your family while you had lube and a condom in your pocket?” Leonard snaps, tossing an annoyed expression over his shoulder.

The situation is quickly diffused when Jim finds his prostate and massages the gland until he’s reduced to trembling and incoherent moaning. “Come on, Bones,” Jim says into his ear. “It’s always good to be prepared.”

“That’s the slogan of the scouts, kid,” Leonard grouses as his voice hitches in his throat. He can’t help it when he bucks onto his boyfriend’s fingers, savoring the frisson of pleasure filling his body. “Oh fuck…Jim, you’re going to get us in trouble!”

Jim is breathing against the nape of his neck, watching as Leonard opens up for him. “God, you have no idea how much trouble I want to get us into.” With a final squeeze, he withdraws his fingers to sheath the condom over his erection.

Fingers caress his chin and turn his head until the taste of Jim’s lips is all he’s aware of Leonard opens his mouth to seek more, groaning as the younger man’s tongue curls around his. For all the times they’ve made love, Leonard will never stop being breathless when Jim pushes into him. He relishes the burn and stretch that comes with being penetrated and the way their bodies fit together; Leonard marvels at it all.

 

* * *

 

He survives the night, though not without faraway, wondering glances from Chris.

A part of Leonard wants to tell him, no matter how insane his story sounds, and to apologize for leaving him waiting on a park bench all those years ago. He panicked when he saw Chris holding a ring box in his palm and knew he needed to disappear.

To spare Chris the pain of his existence.

In the end it hurt them both; Leonard became someone else and Chris rebounded and made a life with Phil. He likes the man who his old boyfriend has chosen; Phil has all the qualities desirable in a partner and seems to have taken Leonard’s reappearance in stride.

“I didn’t realize that someone else was out here,” Chris says, startled. He is standing in the patio door when Leonard turns to look at him. “I can come back later.”

He shakes his head, motioning Chris over. “Don’t be silly; there’s enough backyard for the two of us,” Leonard tells him, earning a smile in return.

“Being inside that house with my husband _and_ Winona is like going to the circus,” Chris comments once he’s planted himself on a spot next to Leonard. “That’s some smart thinking—escaping like that.”

Shrugging it off, Leonard shoves his hands into his pockets to keep the chill at bay. “I did offer to help,” he says. “But Mrs. Kirk shooed me away. I think she wrangled Jim into something; haven’t seen him for the last hour or so.”

Chris chuckles at this. “You offered to help?”

“My mama did raise me to be a gracious house guest, after all,” Leonard softly retorts.

“Well, I think she would be proud,” the other man tells him. An expression of sadness briefly crosses over his face, brightening his eyes until he blinks. “And your father as well.”

His nostrils flare at the mention of his lie, something which Chris misconstrues as discomfort. “I wouldn’t really know…” Leonard begins to say.

“Sorry,” Chris cuts in. “I shouldn’t have said anything—”

“No, no,” he tells him. “It’s fine—”

Chris holds up a hand and Leonard’s mouth shuts. “You probably hear this all of the time—how much you look like him. The resemblance is uncanny, really.” His eyes roam over him as Chris reaches into his jacket pocket. “Every color in your eyes, every freckle, and _every_ scar.”

Leonard watches as Chris produces a photograph, worn with age and being handled. He doesn’t stay a word as the other man looks between the Polaroid in his hand and himself.

“You have the same scar on your left hand,” Chris declares as he breaks the tense silence. “I stitched it myself in 1968 when you tripped and sliced it open on a rock.”

His heart drops to his stomach while his entire body freezes. Leonard remembers the incident well enough; they had been hiking near a lake. The name escapes him now, but he recalls the lush greenery and sounds of nature as they kept to the trail, not wanting to disturb anything.

Leonard had been drinking from his canteen and walking, despite Chris’ playful warning that no one should do both at the same time. He had a sharp rebuttal, one which was cut off as his boot got snagged under a tree root and he pitched forward, rolling down an embankment.

Chris chased after him and dropped down to his knees to inspect the damage. Leonard found his face cupped in his lover’s palms, smiling at his worried face as he went to touch them. He meant to go kiss the wrinkle upon Chris’ forehead before telling him that he was fine.

“You’re bleeding,” Chris had told him as he reached for Leonard’s hand. The cut was bleeding profusely, staining the cuff of his sleeve.

In the middle of the forest and a flask of whiskey on hand, Leonard watched as Chris stitched his injury and wrapped it in gauze. Hours later while he and Chris lunched on a picnic table, the latter stopped a fellow hiker and asked if she would take their picture.

“I know,” Chris says in the present showing him the photograph—two men sitting arm in arm while one of them attempts to shield his face with a gauze-covered hand. “I know who you are, Leonard.”

Oxygen rushes from his lungs as he fails to come up with an answer. Frightened, his eyes shift between Chris and the photograph. “Please,” Leonard whispers.

“The truth,” Chris counters.

“Chris.”

Chris chuckles sadly as he cards his fingers through his hair. “I thought I was losing my mind,” he tells Leonard as Chris closes the distance between them. The photograph falls onto the grass, forgotten, when he goes to clutch Leonard’s shoulders. “How? How is this possible?”

Tears burn his eyes, his body’s reaction to the raw panic pulsing through him. “I don’t…” he stammers. “I don’t know how. I was normal and then one day…” Leonard bows his head as they come, wet and hot on his cheeks. “it just stopped.”

Chris gasps; the sound shocking Leonard to action. He reaches for him, fingers trembling as he touches his former love’s face.

“I wanted to tell you so badly, Chris,” he says pleadingly. “But I couldn’t. You _know_ what they’d do to me. I would have been a…”

Warm fingers clasp his wrist. “A curiosity,” Chris whispers.

“A specimen,” Leonard adds. More tears come, trailing down his face and neck before they disappear into the collar of his jacket. “That’s why I left…I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want this for you and it hurt so much! I never imagined it could hurt so badly, leaving you…”

Chris wipes his cheek. “You’ve never told anyone?”

“How could I?” Leonard questions, pushing away from him. “Who would believe me, Chris? I would sound insane!”

“Tell Jim,” the man urges as he follows his footsteps. “Don’t run away. Don’t disappear, Leo. Please…for Jim!”

He flinches at hearing the pet name fall from Chris’ lips, feeling the sadness of lost love and bitterness of what his life has become. “It’s dangerous,” he insists. “And Jim deserves more than I can give him.”

“What about _you_ , Leo?” Chris shouts as he grabs Leonard’s wrist. “All these years, you’ve lived but you’ve never had a life.” He tightens his grip. “Stay. For yourself and for Jim.”

Leonard breaks his hold, pushes himself away. “I don’t know how,” he cries.

And then he runs, just as he’s always done.

 

* * *

 

He can still hear Chris shouting after him as he ran into the house in search of Jim’s keys.

It must rouse everyone’s attention for Leonard finds his boyfriend coming up the stairs just as he’s leaving. Jim looks perplexed when he sees what’s in his hand, worried even. His emotions are as clear as day; he can never hide his true feelings with those beautiful eyes of his. “Hey Bones,” Jim says carefully. “Is everything okay?”

“Darlin’,” he says, barely. The word sticks painfully to his throat, as if he’s being stabbed. “I’m so sorry. I can’t…I can’t do this.”

Leonard leaves Jim standing at the top of the stairs and rushes out to the car with only his wallet, cell phone, and the keys in hand. He’s already pulling onto the driveway when Leonard sees Jim in the rearview mirror, the image of him unleashes a sob from deep within.

As he drives, he thinks of all the sacrifices he’s made to live this life - a half-life at best. A life that leaves him feeling empty and unhappy and alone.

He’s missed everything. He’s missed Joanna growing into her own woman and creating a life of her own. He’s missed walking her down the aisle and watching her marry her husband. He’s missed her becoming a mother while earning her Ph.D. He’s never met his grandchildren or their children, only relying on the stories and photographs Joanna shares with him to piece their lives together.

Leonard only gets precious letters and short lengths of time to see his little girl, all because of him. Joanna, Chris, and now Jim’s hurt is a result of his own fear; the realization makes him ill. As he steers the car with one hand, he punches his passcode with the other to dial Joanna.

“Hello?” she greets, sounding as if he’s caught her at a bad time.

“Little bean, it’s daddy,” Leonard says. Relief floods him just by hearing her speak. “I didn’t mean to bother you, baby.”

A door shuts on the other end. “Hey daddy!” Joanna replies excitedly. “Is everything okay? I thought you were with Jim for the weekend?”

“No, yes…” he begins to tell her, groaning at his own actions. He thinks of how natural it sounds to hear Joanna mentioning Jim.

How much that blue-eyed hellion has become such a wonderful part of his life. How much it will hurt not to wake to Jim’s face every morning or hear his voice.

“I’ve made a decision,” Leonard says. “No more running.”

“No more running?” Joanna repeats. “Really, daddy?”

He nods. “Yeah, my little bean,” he tells her. “No more running.”

She makes a delighted sound. “I am so happy to hear that! Does this mean I get to finally meet Jim?”

“I’m glad and yes,” Leonard chuckles. “Bean, I have to go, but I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

Joanna laughs. “Okay. I love you, daddy.”

“I love you, too,” he answers with a happy sigh. “Bye, Jo.”

The call ends, as they usually do, without anything out of the ordinary. Leonard sets the cell phone down on the passenger seat as an intersection comes into view, stopping as one does and looking to make sure everything is clear before proceeding. The roadway is empty, allowing Leonard to turn the car around without interfering with other cars.

As he heads back to the Kirk house, the moon is blotted out by clouds. The moon is responsible for much of what takes place on the surface of Earth.

In 1178, a stray meteor hit the moon. The resulting concussion would cause extreme tides on every lunar phase in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and the twenty-three percent rise in the mean tide on this night produces a storm two thousand miles off the Pacific coast, causing an increase in the amount of molecular ionization in the atmosphere.

And for the first time in seventy-nine years, snow falls in this part of Sonoma County. Leonard leans over the steering wheel to marvel at the event, slowing his response time to an oncoming truck driving on the wrong side of the road.

The force of collision propels his vehicle to roll down an embankment and eject Leonard from his seat just as the truck drives away from the scene of the accident. Unconscious, he lays on the cold ground while snow falls all around him.

In the first stages of hypothermia, the body will try to generate heat through shivering, as Leonard’s does while a passerby pulls over and phones for help. When this fails, it will decrease the flow of blood to the extremities and therefore causing Leonard’s metabolism to slow to a crawl.

He’s dying, but he doesn’t it know.

In the final stages, the victim only breathes once or twice a minute, trapped in a state of suspended animation. At seven minutes past seven o’clock in the evening, Leonard McCoy’s core temperature has dropped to eighty-seven degrees and his heart stops beating.

At last, at the age of one hundred and seven, Leonard McCoy is, by any definition, dead. In that very moment, Jim rushes down the embankment and to his boyfriend’s side where he begins to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He continues as an ambulance pulls up to the scene.

At precisely nine minutes after seven o’clock, Jim is pulled away as a paramedic places two defibrillator paddles onto Leonard’s chest.

They count the prescribed five seconds before administering seven hundred and fifty volts of electricity.

 

* * *

 

Jim paces the waiting area where he tries to do what the room is meant to be used for.

But he doesn’t want to wait; he wants to be by his boyfriend’s side and not in some sterile place away from him. He glances down at his cell phone and grunts at the time—it’s just after ten. Just as Jim begins to wonder just how long it will take the doctors, he misses the sound of footsteps coming for him.

“Mr. Kirk?” a woman inquires.

Jim stops short and turns to her. “Yes? How is he?”

“We’ve just run a series of tests,” the doctor explains, motioning for him to follow her, “and don’t see any long-term damage. In fact, it’s quite remarkable.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, he clutches his stomach. “Is he awake? Can I go see him?”

“He’s exhausted, but you might be able to get in a few words,” she says, grinning as they stop outside of a private hospital room.

Jim cranes his neck to see his boyfriend’s blanket covered feet, no longer paying attention to the doctor. He steps inside, trying to ignore the sounds of hospital machinery. Just seeing it surrounding the bed makes his skin crawl.

“Are you just going to stand there and admire the scenery?”

“Bones,” Jim whispers. He goes to his boyfriend’s side and reaches for his hand, elated to find that he’s no longer ice cold but warm. Bending over the railing, Jim places a kiss upon his brow. “God, Bones…I thought you were dead.”

Fingers squeeze his hand. “It’ll take a bit more than a bad driver to get rid of me, darlin’.”

He laughs because if he doesn’t, Jim will start to cry. If the paramedics hadn’t arrived when they did or if that passerby hadn’t stopped…he would have lost him. “I know why you ran,” Jim tells him.

“You do?”

“It’s because we were moving too fast for you,” Jim begins to explain. “I want _everything_ to be with you, Bones.”

He doesn’t see his boyfriend shaking his head, trying to interject. “Jim.”

“I got tunnel vision and—”

“Jim…”

Jim holds the other man close. “I almost gave up, Nick, but I realized that nothing makes sense without you in my life. We can slow down…”

“ _Jim_!”

His mouth clicks shut.

“I want everything to be with you, too. There’s something else that made me run.”

“What? What is it?”

His boyfriend, for as tired as he appears, looks determined to fight through it. “Well, first, my name isn’t Nick.”

Just as Nick— _Leonard_ —is finished telling Jim of his amazing existence, they are graced with the presence of a frazzled older woman. “My God, what happened?” she demands as she rushes to Leonard’s bedside, completely ignoring Jim.

This woman is quite beautiful for her eighty-three years, just like Leonard described. She has his heart-shaped face and lips while her complexion is fairer than his.

“Nothing,” Leonard assures her as she holds him tightly. “An accident. I’m fine, really.”

She pulls back, inspecting him with similar hazel eyes. “Fine?” she squawks, gesturing wildly to the medical equipment. “ _This_ is not fine!” It’s then she notices Jim and composes herself. With a dimpled smile, she extends her hand for him to shake. “I’m Joanna,” she says. “Nick’s grandmother.”

He and Leonard share a knowing look, something that does not go unnoticed by Joanna.

“What?” she demands. “What is it?”

Jim grins as Leonard clears his throat. “Jim knows.”

“Jim knows?” Joanna echoes, turning to look at him.

He’s about to nod when she throws her arms around him and nearly knocks them to the floor. Jim steadies their equilibrium as Leonard chuckles. Unable to hide his happiness, he returns Joanna’s hug and smiles into her white hair.

 

* * *

 

_New Year’s Eve, 2016_

“We’re back live in Times Square and now, only a few minutes from the moment we’ve been all waiting for,” the television announcer says.

Jim coughs. “For _someone_ to hurry his ass up so we’re not late!” he calls from the living room. He shrugs at Joanna and her husband. “Is he always like this?”

“It’s gotten worse,” she stage-whispers, much to her husband’s amusement.

“I’m _almost_ ready!” Leonard shouts from the bedroom. He hears the living room erupting in laughter at his bold-faced lie. While Jim has been ready for some time, Leonard has been taking his time. It’s his first new years with his boyfriend, daughter, and her husband and he wants it to be perfect.

Even if it means they are an hour late.

“I need help with my cufflinks,” he complains as he joins his guests, earning a whistle from Jim. Leonard rolls his eyes, trying to hide the blush upon his cheeks. “A little assistance, darlin’?”

Jim rises from his place on the couch and goes over to him, pecking Leonard’s mouth. “You look amazing, Bones,” he whispers as he fastens the cufflinks. “I’m the luckiest guy at the party and we’re not even there.”

“Shut it,” Leonard teases as he pulls Jim into a brief kiss. “I’m ready now,” he adds when they part, noticing the strange look on his boyfriend’s face. “What is it?”

Jim takes his head in his hands and tilts it towards the hallway light for a better angle. Without a word, he plucks a hair from Leonard’s head and shows it to his boyfriend. Both of them dumbfounded as they stare at a single gray hair clutched between Jim’s fingers.

The instant Leonard’s heart was struck by the defibrillator paddles, the telomere structures in his genes regained their pliability, causing him to resume the natural course of aging.

“Marry me,” Leonard says once he’s found his voice. His eyes shift from the hair to Jim, who is staring back at him.

Licking his lips, the younger man nods and pulls him close, molding their bodies together. “Yes,” he answers. “A thousand times yes.”

 

* * *

 

It turns out that Chris was right after all; the comet, Leo C 1981, did finally return…over a quarter century late.

And it was as bright and magnificent as he had predicted. 


End file.
